[Lightning-dev] channel rebalancing support kind of exists already?

Robert Olsson robban at robtex.com
Tue Feb 6 16:53:43 UTC 2018


Hello

Let's say Bob opens a channel to Alice for 2BTC
Carol then opens a channel to Bob for 2BTC.
Alice and Carol are already connected to Others (and/or eachother even)
The network and channel balances will look like this:

Alice 0--2 Bob 0--2 Carol
  |                   |
  +----- OTHERS ------+

Bob for some reason wants the channels to be balanced, so he has some
better redundancy and it looks better.

So hypothetically Bob solves this by paying himself an invoice of 1BTC and
making sure the route goes out thru Alice and comes back via Carol. Bob
pays fees so he isn't ashamed if it disturbs the other balances in the
network. Should he care?

Alice 1--1 Bob 1--1 Carol
  |                   |
  +----- OTHERS ------+

Now Bob has two nice balanced channels, meaning he has better connectivity
in both directions.

Doesn't the protocol already support that kind of solutions, and all we
need is a function in the CLI allowing Bob to pay to himself, and specify
which two channels he would like to balance?

Maybe even make it automatically balance.

Is this a good idea of something to support, and/or Is there a risk the
entire network will start doing this and it will start oscillating?

Best regards
Robert Olsson
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